


What Love Is

by El Staplador (elstaplador)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Christian Holidays, Depression, Fade to Black, M/M, Missing Scenes, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Religious Themes, Russian Orthodoxy, Stealth Crossover, Victor's Foot Thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 05:55:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10656306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/pseuds/El%20Staplador
Summary: No matter how much you think you know, there's always more to learn. As the years pass, Victor discovers all sorts of things about all sorts of different kinds of love.





	What Love Is

**Author's Note:**

> With grateful thanks to Naraht for a) persuading me that I wanted to write this in the first place; and b) betaing and Orthodox-picking.

It had always been like this: circling the ice, skating through the patches of shadow, skating through the patches of light.

'He makes it look so easy,' they said. They meant the skating; they meant the physical skill and strength that he'd spent a lifetime securing. But Victor made the rest of it look easy, too, he knew. Sometimes, watching his own performances, he couldn't tell the difference between the ones that had flowed from him without the intervention of his conscious mind and the ones that he'd had to force onto the ice with his teeth gritted.

It was the same between performances: turning up, day after day, week after week; working through the steps, the jumps, the spins, that made the routine, laying them out one after another as if they were nothing more than a shopping list; trusting, hopelessly, that they made sense in a context that he couldn't see from here. Step after step, jump after jump, contest after contest, trying to cling on, until, until, until... he never knew, _until_ suddenly it fell from him like a cloak and everything was sharper, brighter, and he looked around, blinking, to see where he was this time.

*

Everything started in September. The Grand Prix series took care of autumn. Nationals followed the Grand Prix Final and Europeans followed nationals and Worlds followed Europeans, as reliable as Christmas and Epiphany, Lent and Easter. The wheel of the year was endlessly reassuring, a lifebelt to cling to when the fog was drowning him; a compass when it lifted, allowing him to orient himself by the red or the purple. Or the gold.

*

**September**

His first time at Yakov's summer camp, there'd been an awful argument with a Polish boy called Henryk. It had been the more devastating because he couldn't understand it.

'Of course I'm not going to be a skater, anyway.' Henryk had tossed the words out carelessly, as if that was the sort of thing you could _say_ after a mildly difficult practice. 'I'm only here to keep my parents quiet.'

Horrified, Victor had looked around to make sure that Yakov wasn't in earshot before demanding, 'What are you going to be, then?'

'A priest.'

'But you're Roman Catholic.'

'So?'

'You'd have to be single. Forever.'

Henryk had looked infuriatingly smug. 'You think I care about that?'

That was how it had started. It had ended in both of them saying things that were close to unforgivable about each other's countries, each other's Churches, _each other_ , and not speaking for the rest of the week.

  
Victor had gone home and sobbed in his grandmother's lap, coughing up the story word by painful word.

'Vitya,' she said softly.

He looked up. The room was swimming in the haze of his tears. The row of icons, their gold leaf glinting richly in the glow of the candlelight: Saint Catherine; Saints Sergius and Bacchus; the Theotokos.

'The Catholics say, Jesus Christ never married, so their priests mustn't marry, either. But we say, we simply don't know, and so there's room for all of us. Our priests, who do, and our bishops, who don't, and everybody else, as well.' She stroked his hair, tenderly, as if she understood more about him and Henryk than Victor did himself.

'I'll tell Henryk that,' he said triumphantly.

She shook her head. 'No, Vitya. There's room for _all of us_. There's room for every part of us, too.'

That was harder to believe.

*

The first time he came to a competition was always a bewildering whirl, a dazzle of new people to meet, new streets to get lost in if he (or his chaperone) wasn't paying attention, a new rink to find his way around. When he started competing internationally there was inevitably an unfamiliar language, too. Given the choice, he would have concentrated on his skating and let his coach worry about everything else, but that was a luxury that a future star wasn't allowed. What he did off the ice was as important as what he did on it.

Every time he returned he knew the city a little better, he knew the language a little better. Every time – it went without saying – his skating was better. So long as he was good enough – and there was never any doubt about that – he would keep coming back. Until, of course, he got too good to have to come back to this particular contest.

Or – he supposed, vaguely, that the time must come, _some day_ – until he chose not to come back at all.

*

As an interpreter, Minako left a certain amount to be desired. She would stop half-way through a sentence to yell back at Yuuri, or, rather, Yuuri's image on the screen, which rather broke the flow. Still, Victor was getting the gist of it.

'… _the love of my family, my..._ what's the word?... _hometown..._ He called us “abstract”, would you believe that?... _love exists all around me._ ' Minako paused to take a swig of sake.

She was affronted, but Victor knew what Yuuri meant. It was easy to ignore what had always existed all around you; it took somebody new sweeping into your life to make you appreciate what you already had. He glanced around at the love that existed all around Yuuri, personified in this little group clustered in front of the screen. The Katsukis; the Nishigoris; Minako.

He'd had that, too, he realised with a sudden shock of tenderness, remembering the way that his rinkmates would gather in the break room to watch whenever one of their number was competing, remembering the banter and the cheers, the genuine desire for whoever it was to do well. That was love, too. He supposed that they'd have been doing the same thing for him, every time; thought that perhaps they hadn't, after all; and then discarded that thought as false modesty. He wished that any of this had occurred to him at the time, that he'd been able to feel and express the gratitude that was sweeping over him now. The way that Yuuri was doing.

Makkachin wriggled in Victor's arms.

' _Victor,_ ' Minako continued translating, ' _is the first person I've ever wanted to hold onto._ '

So that was why Hiroko was beaming at him. He beamed back, feeling the warmth of the love that surrounded Yuuri extending all the way out to himself.

' _I don't really know what to call it, but I've decided to call it love._ '

'When you come back, Yuuri, we'll burn that tie,' Victor said. As a reaction, it was entirely unequal to the depth of his feelings, but then anything would have been.

*

**October**

Any time he was assigned the first event of the Grand Prix Series, he knew it was going to be a good season. Victor went in all guns blazing; he liked to make his impression as early as possible.

Chris always muttered about starting slowly and peaking _when it really mattered_ , but he had yet to beat Victor to anything.

*

'Show me your true _eros_ , Yuuri,' Victor said, for what felt like the hundredth time.

'It still doesn't feel like me,' Yuuri protested under his breath, but he skated off to practise the step sequence.

It wasn't about being yourself, Victor thought. No, he corrected himself: it was, but it was about showing off who you were, projecting the idea of yourself across an expanse of empty ice, getting the message across so thoroughly that thirteen thousand people couldn't fail to see who you were.

And Yuuri... was getting there. And Victor... was having to remind himself that not everybody saw Yuuri the way he did. Least of all Yuuri himself.

  
Chris texted: _See you in China._

Victor texted back: _:) be good to see you_

_How's Japan?_

_Beautiful. Good food._ (This was the understatement of the century, but SMS had its limitations. Even Instagram could only do so much. The truth was, Victor had revised his initial estimate from 'Is this what God eats?' to 'This is _definitely_ what God eats.')

_Good sex?_

Victor let this one wait a while, and replied, smiling to himself: _I'll let you know._

He suspected that it was going to be. When it happened. If it happened.

*

**November**

After China, everything felt different. Or perhaps it was the same, just more so. Everything had taken on an extra dimension, seemed more real, more substantial. The memory of that quad flip could still set his heart racing; that kiss had been followed by many others, less spectacular but no less sweet. Kisses and more than kisses, and Victor remembered what he'd meant when he'd talked about drowning in pleasure, except that he wasn't really sure that he'd understood it, then.

And the trees were aflame with red and gold, and Hiroko's cooking was still divine, and mornings were getting colder, and Victor's old knee injury was still sending twinges down into his shin.

  
Yuuri was limping slightly, too. When he took his trainers off at the door of Yu-topia, there was a suspicious reddish stain on his left sock.

'Yuuri. Your feet,' Victor said sternly. 'You ought to know how to take care of them by now.'

'I do!' Yuuri protested.

'Then why aren't you? Come on. My room. It's closer.' Besides, for some reason Yuuri was more comfortable being in Victor's room than he was having him in his own. 'Sit down.'

Yuuri glanced from one sofa to the other, frowned at the glass-topped table, and settled for, and on, the edge of the bed. Victor sat down beside him.

'Don't look, Victor, they're such a mess,' Yuuri pleaded as he hoisted his right ankle over his left knee.

'If they're a mess,' Victor said, 'I need to look at them. As your coach.' He wondered how long that excuse would hold out; though here it was ninety per cent true.

Yuuri sighed and rolled his sock down, swapped his legs over, and took the left sock off as well. Victor had seen worse, but Yuuri was right: his feet were a mess. Burst blisters, flaps of peeling skin stained yellow with iodine, a smear of dried blood, plasters rubbing off at the edges and leaving a grubby residue behind. It was too late for reproaches: the damage was done. Victor dropped a kiss on the top of Yuuri's head instead, and fetched a basin of warm, clean, water, a towel, and a washcloth.

Yuuri looked as if he was thinking of protesting again, but he didn't say anything when Victor knelt beside him.

He began by washing Yuuri's feet, folding the corner of the cloth into a point and scrubbing gently until the grime came away. Then he laid the towel over his own knee and took hold of them, one after the other, drying them, and smiling at Yuuri's sigh of pleasure and the blush that followed it.

'Stay there.' Victor rose, wincing at a stab of cramp in his own left foot, and went to find his own kit. Settling himself on the floor once again and taking hold of Yuuri's foot, he took out the little pair of scissors and turned his attention to snipping away the little patches of skin that were flapping loose.

'Victor, you don't have to...'

'Hush.'

He stuck cushioned hydrocolloid gel plasters over the blisters that had not broken. The rest he dotted with antiseptic salve and covered with regular plasters.

Then he rummaged in the bag for his last tube of his favourite lotion. The manufacturer had gone out of business and he had yet to persuade anybody else to start making it; nevertheless, he squeezed a reckless quantity into the palm of his hand and began massaging it into Yuuri's feet. The room was filled with the drowsy scent of lavender.

Yuuri flexed his feet as if to stop it dripping off them. 'Honestly, Victor, you can't get that stuff any more.'

Victor could have asked how Yuuri knew that, but he didn't; he just bent and kissed his right foot. The lotion tasted foul, but the mingled amusement and tenderness on Yuuri's face when Victor looked back up was worth it.

He tried to put the cap back on the tube; it slipped from his greased fingers and skidded across the floor. And if his hands were as slippery as that, then Yuuri's feet would be treacherous. 'You probably shouldn't try walking until it's had a chance to sink in,' he said.

'Then you'll just have to carry me,' Yuuri said, a small and teasing smile lifting the corners of his mouth.

'If you like. But you don't have to leave this room if you don't want to.'

In answer to that, Yuuri flopped backwards. 'Then I won't.'

Victor got up and shut the door. 'So,' he said, flinging himself on the bed alongside Yuuri, 'what will it be tonight?'

Yuuri smiled at him and plucked at the hem of Victor's T-shirt. 'I'm not sure, yet.'

Taking the hint, Victor pulled the garment up and over his head. 'Really? No ideas at all?'

'Oh, I have plenty of _ideas_ ,' Yuuri murmured. 'I just don't know which one to start with.'

'It's a nice problem to have,' Victor agreed. This was all still so new. There was so much still to be explored. Victor had had nearly a year to think about it, and it would probably take them as much time to work through everything that had occurred to him. Some things were going to have to wait, at least if Yuuri wanted to be able to skate tomorrow. Others...

He smiled and pressed a long, slow, kiss into Yuuri's hip. 'How about if we start here?'

'Yes,' Yuuri said. 'Yes. But don't stop there.'

Victor didn't.

*

**December**

The Sochi banquet was another revival of that tired classic, _Victor Nikiforov, Pride of Russia, greets his adoring sponsors_. Until it wasn't.

  
Nationals went entirely as scripted. Gold: Victor Nikiforov. Silver: Georgi Popovich. Bronze: Oleg Kirsakov. Perhaps next year it would be more interesting, with Yuri Plisetsky in the mix. Perhaps Victor would stick around long enough to find out.

He always toyed with the idea of quitting, and he had never actually done it. But then he'd never had such an intriguing inducement before. _Please come to Hasetsu_.

*

Barcelona looked more beautiful than it ever had before, its evening lights reflected in Yuuri's shining eyes. The streets and squares were full of chatty, contented, people, the shops were warm and welcoming, and there was a choir on the steps of Sagrada Família. A soprano soloist, her tone rich and full, carried the tune above the gentle hum of the rest of the group.

 _Tomorrow shall be my dancing day: I would my true love did so chance_  
_To see the legend of my play, to call my true love to my dance._

_Sing O my love, O my love, my love, my love. This have I done for my true love._

Victor noted, absently, its long, elegant, aching lines, rising and falling, but Yuuri was hurrying them past, all the way up the half-shadowed steps, as close as they could get to the locked gates.

_Of her I took fleshly substance. Thus was I knit to man's nature, to call my true love to my dance._

Intrigued and delighted, Victor let himself be led there. _Tomorrow_ , he thought...

_Sing O, my love -_

'Victor?'

_O, my love -_

'Mm?'

_\- my love_

'What are you thinking?'

_\- my love_

Cautiously, Victor exhaled. 'This song. It's very beautiful.'

_In a manger laid and wrapped I was, So very poor, that was my chance_

Yuuri stood very still, head cocked to one side, listening. 'Yes,' he agreed softly.

_Betwixt an ox and a silly poor ass_

Oh, _Christmas_ , Victor thought; that makes sense. And then: they'd been right about _On Love: Agape_. Both the Yuris had been right. They'd said the same thing in their very different ways. _This innocence crap makes me wanna barf_ , or, _Someone who doesn't know what love is_. That icy remoteness missed the point. This piece was closer. If God knew what it was to be human, then God's heart could be broken, too.

Victor's own heart was leaping.

'Victor...'

There was a tiny silence, then a desultory patter of applause. The choir began singing something else. Victor wasn't paying attention to that now, wasn't looking away from Yuuri, not when he looked like this, not when he was gently drawing his glove off, not when he was pushing a gold ring onto his finger.

Overhead, a bell rang, as if proclaiming that nothing would ever be the same again.

  
'Let's end this.'

It was a tortuous, tortured conversation, that kept them up far too late for the night before a competition, digging their way through layer upon layer of failed communication, disposing of one misunderstanding only to turn up another in its place.

'You gave me everything,' Yuuri said when at last they'd established what they were talking about ending. 'Everything you had, everything you were – you gave it up for me.'

It hadn't felt like much of a sacrifice at the time, Victor thought. He'd left his career and his reputation behind with no regrets. Now – yes, he wanted it back, but not at such a price. _You can pay my fees later_ , he'd said, and here was Yuuri paying him back with interest. He said, 'So show me it was worth something to you.'

Yuuri gasped as if Victor had struck him. They were trading blow for blow, both wounded, both wounding. 'I can't,' he said in a whisper, 'let you be less than you are, even for me. Especially for me.'

'Then how can you expect me to accept that from you?'

Yuuri sighed. 'Let's see after the free skate,' he said after a little silence. 'Let's see whether what I've got is worth any of this.'

Reluctantly, Victor let it go at that. It was late.

He lay awake for a long time, listening to Yuuri's breathing, and in the morning he walked out along the seawall, looking for something bigger, to put it into perspective and make sense of it all.

  
Then there was silver around Yuuri's neck; there was gold on Yuuri's finger and on his own; and Victor believed that he could do anything. He could be anything that Yuuri needed, and he could be himself too.

  
It wasn't until much, much later that Yuuri said, 'Victor?'

Victor opened one eye. 'My love?'

' _Can_ you do both? Won't our nationals be the same days?'

'Shit,' Victor said, though without much feeling. He couldn't bring himself to worry, not with Yuuri lying so close in his arms. 'I hadn't thought of that. We'll work something out. No. I'm the coach. I'll work something out.'

'I don't expect you to be superhuman,' Yuuri said. His voice suggested that he was doing the worrying for both of them. Then, 'And what about your birthday?'

'My birthday always clashes with nationals,' Victor said, surprised. 'Every year, in fact. Usually we go out for dinner or something. There's vodka. Champagne. My birthday is the least of our problems.'

'Oh, Victor.' Yuuri's voice was tender, exasperated, and Victor wanted to explain that he'd celebrate whatever there was to celebrate; he didn't really mind what it was, and that if he missed something this year, then there was always next year. But it was too late, and too difficult to put into words, and this negotiation was just another thing that they'd return to again and again until they got it right. Instead, he rolled them both over, and kissed Yuuri hard.

  
They were late down to breakfast. Mila was seated at a table on her own, looking uncharacteristically subdued.

'Good morning, Mila,' Victor said, sitting down opposite her while Yuuri went to stare longingly at the buffet.

She gave him a half-hearted smile. 'Yuri said you're coming back.' It wasn't quite an accusation.

'If Yakov will take me back.' Yakov hadn't said either way. Yet.

'After running off to Japan like some kind of high-maintenance Holy Fool?'

Victor chuckled. 'Yakov never said that.'

'No, that was Anya. But of course he'll take you back.'

Victor was fairly confident of this, but one could never be sure. 'Where is Yurio, anyway?' he asked.

Mila shrugged her shoulders. 'Hiding from the Angels, probably.'

That figured. 'What about everyone else? Sara Crispino?'

'With JJ and Ciao Ciao, would you believe? And her brother,' she added, as if Michele Crispino was barely worth mentioning. 'Gone to Mass.'

Yuuri appeared at that moment with a bowl of muesli and a teapot that he didn't seem entirely sure about. 'Hello, Mila,' he said.

'Good morning, Yuuri. Congratulations.'

Yuuri blinked and smiled, as if he was surprised that she knew who he was. 'Thank you.'

'Mila was saying that some of the others have gone to church,' Victor explained.

Yuuri looked suddenly worried. 'Did you want to go? You shouldn't have waited for me to get up.'

Sometimes, when he was away at competitions, Victor had looked up the nearest Orthodox church and gone along on the Sunday morning, when there was no longer anything to worry about except the exhibition in the evening. It would have been easy in Moscow. He'd meant to do it, but then they'd had the call from Mari and he'd flown back for Makkachin. Barcelona was a different matter. He just said, 'Not with them – I'm not Catholic.'

He couldn't help laughing at Yuuri's mystified expression, but a thousand years of Church history seemed far too complicated to explain at that moment. 'Let's go for a walk after breakfast,' he said instead.

  
The sea was bright in the winter sun, fractured into a thousand flecks of light. Nothing was clear, everything was uncertain, but Yuuri was close beside him, and if Victor had no idea how anything was meant to work, it didn't seem to matter.

*

**January**

_The day I passed my inter-silver, I got the scolding of my life for asking Harriet to take my skates off for me. At the time I thought it was just Nana being tiresome, but it very quickly became clear that the one was coming after me ranked ahead of me, and if anyone was going to be doing any unlacing it ought to be me. Not that I ever did..._

Yakov had an extensive collection of books by skaters, about skating, most with florid inscriptions by the authors inside the front, and none of which he ever read himself. He had lent Lalla Moore's autobiography to Victor with the twin hopes of improving his English and impressing upon him the probable consequences of behaving like a brat. Victor loved it, and was never quite sure whether that annoyed Yakov or pleased him.

Eventually, when Yakov demanded the book's return, Victor had bought his own copy and buttonholed Lalla Moore when she was commentating for the BBC at the Turin Olympics. She'd made him laugh by doing worryingly good impressions: of Yakov berating an errant skater, of Lilia taking a curtain call, and of himself receiving his gold medal; and finally she'd signed the book.

It was funny, gossipy, and very long, and Victor had discovered by experiment that if he read it slowly enough it kept him going until Europeans, if not until Worlds, and by then things would have changed.

He read it every year.

*

The loneliest winter was the one after Sochi.

He knew that there had been fun, there had been champagne, there had been better company than he'd ever imagined. And it might as well all have been a dream. All he had to remember it was a handful of photographs, which seemed to say less and less the more he looked at them. It was some other Victor Nikiforov who was laughing with such joy and animation. He had nothing with which he could summon the sensation of warm arms around him, and only a fading memory of an insistent voice slurring, 'Be my coach, Victor!'

He skated through the miserable steps of _Stammi vicino_ , over and over again, and if anybody could see the difference they never told him.

_I hear a voice crying afar off:_  
_You, have you been forsaken?_  
_I must drain this cup to the dregs._

*

**February**

It was simple for Makkachin; Makkachin, for whom gold medals meant nothing, who loved Victor regardless. With humans it was easy, too easy, to write off any display of affection as self-interest, or simply as mistaken identity. They'd thought they were talking to the great Victor Nikiforov, and he'd managed to keep it together long enough not to disillusion them. That was all it was.

Sometimes, when he was too tired to do anything else, he would bury his face in Makkachin's warm fur, feeling her back rise and fall with her breath, marvelling at the impossible responsibility of love, of being adored far beyond anything he could ever be worth; it was overwhelming. Sometimes, he understood why people had cats instead.

*

'You were like this last year, too,' Yuuri said. 'I thought it was because we were competing against each other, but it clearly isn't.'

Victor tried to remember last year, and got as far as summoning a foggy sense of exhaustion and resignation. 'It's always like this, between Europeans and Worlds. These last few months of the season, I hate them,' he admitted, and waited for the world to end. When it didn't, he added, 'I don't know why I expected it to be any different just because I've stopped skating.'

'Is there anything that I can do?' Yuuri asked. He had that tender, worried expression that always made Victor ache to say something, to do something, to make it better, whatever it was.

Except this time _it_ was him, and if he _knew_ how to make it better... He shook his head, as much in frustration as in answer. 'No. It'll pass.'

Yuuri's face cleared a little; he nodded, not arguing. He was wiser than Victor. That, or he knew himself better, was able to extrapolate from his own experience, knew that it couldn't be fixed by a kind word or a kiss or anything that another person could do. And Victor would have felt guilty, if he could; he would have felt grateful, if he could. As it was, he squeezed Yuuri's hand, and hoped it conveyed everything that couldn't be expressed, couldn't even be felt at the moment.

*

**March**

A third World Championship gold medal. Why not? (Why?)

He couldn't stop. Not until Worlds. (And after that? He couldn't ever imagine anything beyond that.) The gold. Yakov told him that there was a distinct chance that he wouldn't win it, which meant that there was something to work towards. Probably it would just be tinsel again, but he told himself it was worth the chasing, because perhaps this time it would fling reality back at him.

*

With every performance, his technical score went up, and his component score went down. _Stammi Vicino_ became more and more artificial, but never any less brilliant.

*

**April**

In the spring, everything came abruptly to life.

Victor remembered when he was very small indeed, perhaps even before he'd started skating, going out for branches of pussy-willow for Palm Sunday, stroking the soft, silvery buds in uncomplicated wonder.

It was always something like that.

*

'Stop, stop!' Victor called.

Yuri stopped. And glared at him.

Victor was used to Yuri's glaring at him. 'Something isn't right here,' he said mildly.

'I'm doing it like you showed me, aren't I, Victor?' Yuri hissed.

Victor ignored that. 'The way you currently are, your greed is too obvious. There's no sense of _agape_ , unconditional love, in your performance. It's good to have confidence, but this programme isn't where you should show it off.'

'Huh? You're the one who's skated with complete confidence this whole time! Well, what's _agape_ to you, then, Victor?'

'It's a feeling, of course, so I could never explain it in words...' He spread his hands, frustrated.

Had they been in St Petersburg, he would have taken Yuri to the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, to show him what he meant. As a child, he'd loved to go there, to stand on that glassy floor, to catch his breath at the majestic expanse of space above him, to imagine the ghosts of Soviet skaters almost visible swooping and gliding between the solemn worshippers.

He'd brought _The Ladder of Divine Ascent_ with him to Japan, meaning to finally get around to reading it this year. But he hadn't managed it yet, and he didn't think he'd be able to get Yuri to read it, either. 'Well,' he announced, 'maybe we need a temple.'

  
The visit to the temple made no appreciable difference to Yuri's grasp of the concept of _agape_. But the waterfall seemed to do the trick. Suddenly there was a care, a tenderness, to the performance. 'Looks like Yurio's discovered his _agape_...' Victor murmured to himself. He called across the ice, 'Yurio! You had it then! What were you thinking about?'

For a moment he didn't think that Yuri was going to answer. It didn't matter, Victor told himself with a satisfied consciousness of his responsibility as coach; the important thing was to make sure that Yuri was aware of what had worked.

But Yuri, thunder-faced, spat out, 'My grandfather,' and skated off before Victor could comment.

It made sense, he thought, remembering his own grandmother taking him to the cathedral on Great and Holy Thursday, to see the Bishop come out with a basin and a golden jug of water and kneel to wash the feet of the priests. 'It's to show you what love looks like,' she'd said. 'Not what it is, you can't do that, you can't see it. But what it looks like.'

*

In Hasetsu spring came more gradually. But it was lovely here, too, walking with Yuuri under great clouds of cherry blossom, catching his breath at the beauty of it, watching the sunlight fade gently to gold and the lanterns twinkling into life in the gathering darkness.

*

**May**

They had, predictably, wasted a good half hour talking at cross-purposes, with Victor telling Yuuri he didn't have to come to church, and Yuuri thinking that meant that Victor didn't want him to. And now they weren't exactly late, but midnight was approaching and they were having to walk a little faster than Victor would have chosen -

\- but in the darkness and the stillness, holding his breath along with a thousand other people, eyes fixed on that solitary candle flame, it all slowed -

\- and the light spreading, candle to candle, and the rich, choking scent of incense, and the great crowd of people spilling out of the doors, the swelling, exultant hymn, and the clamour of the bells -

\- and he was wondering what Yuuri was making of it all, and at the same time he knew that it didn't really matter, that Yuuri was taking it in with a detached, respectful curiosity that meant as much in its way as Victor's own reckless enthusiasm for Hasetsu and everything that happened there.

  
'It used to be an ice rink,' Victor said when they were walking home at half past four on Easter morning. 'They turned it back into a cathedral in the nineties.'

'You said that earlier. I was trying to imagine it.' Yuuri said, and then asked, suddenly, 'Do you mind?'

'Which? That it was an ice rink, or that it isn't any more?'

'Either,' Yuuri said through a yawn.

'Why would I? It's the same thing.' Victor thought about it a little and added, 'Well, it is for me.'

Yuuri laughed.

'What?'

'When you said you didn't really celebrate Christmas in Russia...' he began.

Victor raised his eyebrows. 'When did I say that?'

'Barcelona, our first year... Our first year _together_.'

'I probably meant... What did I mean? That I didn't want you thinking too far ahead of the Grand Prix Final.'

Yuuri darted a suspicious glance at him. 'And the same thing goes for your birthday, does it?'

Victor remembered the conversation now. 'Oh, yes. And my birthday is only Christmas Day in the Western calendar, and it always got mixed up with nationals. It's true, though,' he said happily.

'What is?'

'Christmas. It's got nothing on Easter. You haven't tried kulich yet, have you?'

Yuuri was looking at him with an odd expression on his face.

'Is something wrong?' Victor asked.

Yuuri shook his head. 'No – at least, I don't think so? But – earlier, in church – you were looking like you do on the ice, except with your real face on.'

Puzzled, Victor tried to recall what he'd been doing. He hadn't been thinking about it; he'd just become part of the whole general movement of priest and people. 'How do you mean?' he asked.

'I...' Yuuri hesitated. 'Sometimes, when we do _Stammi vicino_ , and you forget it's not just you and me. It's as if you're not there, but really you're _more_ there... Like that.'

'Oh, I see,' he said softly. 'I see. Yes, but just because it's a performance doesn't mean it isn't true.'

'I didn't say it wasn't.' Yuuri was smiling to himself. He looked as if he was going to say something else, but he didn't.

'Mm?' Victor nudged him gently in the ribs, wanting to dislodge the words before they could stick and fester.

The smile grew broader. 'I can see why you like it. All that gold.'

'I'm crushed,' Victor said. 'How do you know it's not that I like gold because of all that?'

He took Yuuri's hand and kissed the ring. Something solid, weighty, substantial, soft and precious; not in itself a source of light, but reflecting back whatever light was to be had. Perhaps, Victor thought, it was not as important as all that.

*

**June**

Love looked like all sorts of things. For example:

A video that had never been meant to be filmed.

A bed set up in a banquet room. (And another, in a storage room.)

Three tiny but indomitable guards on the door of Ice Castle Hasetsu.

A rigorous training regime.

An all-nighter at the ballet studio.

A clear-eyed enumeration of the faults in a short program or a free skate, no holding back.

A quad flip.

A lecture delivered at high volume, to be answered, always, with a hug.

*

**July**

The sun was bright when they came out of Ice Castle Hasetsu, the heat hitting them like a wall after the cool of the rink. The sea sparkled invitingly.

'Let's go swimming,' Victor said.

Yuuri shuddered. 'It's not as warm as it looks, you know. It'll be better in the autumn.'

'I'm Russian,' Victor reminded him. 'Warmth is irrelevant.'

Yuuri complained all the way to the beach, but he went in too, swimming in dutiful lines parallel to the beach. Victor kicked around lazily, sometimes just floating on his back, squinting up at the sky, until Yuuri crept up on him and splashed him. Makkachin swam in little circles around them, barking excitedly.

Victor admitted that it wasn't as warm as it had looked.

Yuuri admitted that it wasn't as cold as he had feared.

But he still chased Victor up and down the beach afterwards. To warm up, he said. It was only partly by accident that Victor let him catch him right at the showers and got his revenge for the splashing.

*

It was never going to be easy, slotting two, three, calendars together; and if they'd tried to do everything they'd have collapsed with exhaustion. But they did what they could, and it seemed to work.

Yuuri told him the story of two lovers crossing the Milky Way to meet each other. It seemed entirely reasonable to Victor.

*

**August**

'What do you want me to be to you?' Victor asked. 'A father figure?'

'No.'

'Then... your boyfriend.'

'No! Yourself.'

And Victor would have been disappointed, but, panic aside, Yuuri was looking at Victor as if he actually knew who that was.

*

There had been a time when he couldn't imagine himself beyond the age of thirty, when his future had been nothing but ice in all directions, as far as the eye could see.

Then he'd found himself at the side of the rink, watching the world spinning around Yuuri, and discovered that there was life beyond the ice, after all.

He'd gone back, and he could never quite regret those glorious, awful months when they'd been competing against each other, competing _together_ , waiting for each other at the gap in the barrier. Even if Victor's body had held up for much longer against that sort of pressure, their relationship might not have done. It didn't come to that. He retired, this time for good, and found that he hadn't lost anything. It still belonged to him, all of it.

*

It was a sultry afternoon, sticky heat trapped beneath the clouds. The air was as close inside Yu-topia as it was outside, the way it had been all week. They always came back to Hasetsu to find answers, but answers seemed to be in short supply today. Back in Yuuri's bedroom, it was as if they were back at the beginning again, but this time there was no prospect of a further season for either of them. Victor couldn't, and Yuuri wouldn't.

'Perhaps,' Yuuri said, his back to Victor as he looked out of the window, 'I should ask Mari if she thinks it's time I took my turn at running this place.'

'We could found an academy at Ice Castle Hasetsu.' Victor leaned back on the pillows and readjusted the laptop on his knees. He typed _hotel management_ into the search bar, and wondered whether Yuuri really knew anything about the subject at all. 'You really could coach, you know. You'd be much better than I ever was. More patient.' These days, Victor stuck to choreography. He had the ideas. Other people could put them into practice.

'You were my favourite coach,' Yuuri said, smiling.

'I didn't do much.'

'You didn't need to. You were just there, being yourself. It was all I needed.' The smile became a smirk. 'Well, that and Yurio teaching me to land a quad Salchow.'

'You always say you want me to be myself,' Victor observed. He closed the laptop and laid it safely on the floor beside the bed.

'Well, yes,' Yuuri said as if it were obvious. 'I want everything. Not just the bits you think are presentable.'

'Most of me is presentable, thank you very much,' Victor snorted.

'Oh,' Yuuri said, coming to sit astride his lap, 'oh, no, _all_ of you.' He started undoing the buttons of Victor's shirt.

'You,' Victor told him, 'are absolutely fucking gorgeous. Beautiful.' He wrapped his arms around Yuuri and kissed him, hard, letting his hands roam up his back.

'… I have told you, over and over again in all the years we've been together,' Yuuri said plaintively as he pulled away, 'to let me take my glasses off _before_ you try to get my T-shirt off.'

'Sorry,' Victor said, leaning up to kiss Yuuri's ear where the arm of the spectacles had caught it on the way past, then worked his way down his throat, his chest. He leaned back, traced the line of Yuuri's appendix scar, ran a finger over the silvery stretchmarks at his hip.

'What?' Yuuri murmured when Victor laughed.

'I'm still getting used to seeing you without bruises.'

'I think,' Yuuri said gravely, squinting down at his own chest, 'you just gave me some more.'

'Oh, well,' Victor said, and turned his attention to getting Yuuri out of his jeans.

  
At first it was slow and sweet; then it was hot and urgent; it was like every other time, and it was like no other time.

  
'But you know what I mean,' Yuuri said afterwards. 'I love _you_. Everything that you are.'

Victor had to think back quite a long way, but he did know, and even now he couldn't quite take it in. 'Come on,' he said. 'Let's go down to the beach. It's too hot in here.'

'That means moving,' Yuuri complained. 'That means _clothes_.'

Victor wasn't particularly keen on that part of it, either. But they went to the beach.

  
There was a little breeze blowing off the sea, just enough to ruffle the hair and caress the skin, just enough to take the edge off the oppressive heat. They settled down just above the high tide mark and sat in silence for several minutes.

'It doesn't matter,' Victor said. 'It doesn't matter what you do now. It's who you are.' In his head, it had sounded deeply profound. Out loud, it sounded banal.

'I used to feel so alone,' Yuuri said, wonderingly. It didn't sound like a reply to what Victor had said, but he thought that perhaps it was. 'And then you came, and I realised that I'd never been alone. But it took you showing up, large as life, to make me realise it.'

'Of course,' Victor said, not really knowing which part of Yuuri's speech he was affirming. But it made sense. The only way they could understand love, the only way they could love at all, was as humans: kissing, weeping, eating, drinking, fucking, skating. He reached out to take Yuuri's hand, and a sudden shock of sunlight broke through the clouds and turned the sea to gold, too bright to look at.

**Author's Note:**

> [Saints Sergius and Bacchus](http://jesusinlove.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/saints-sergius-and-bacchus-male-couple.html) (I was in two minds as to whether to include them or [Boris and George](http://jesusinlove.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/boris-and-george-united-in-love-and.html))
> 
> [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0Yod6A403s) is the version of _Tomorrow shall be my dancing day_ that the choir is singing (probably a bit slower) in the December segment. (Though I prefer [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDeTNM7frtk) myself.)
> 
>  
> 
> [The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, at one point the Vasilyevsky Island Rink](https://naraht.tumblr.com/post/176406932269/this-is-the-church-of-the-assumption-of-the)
> 
>  
> 
> On a personal note, _Yuri!!! on Ice_ did a great deal to improve a winter in which being queer and Anglican was a more trying experience than it usually is, and I very much appreciated its portrayal of a world without homophobia, a world which seems to be much less fucked up about sex in general, in which religion is nevertheless managing to exist quite happily. One can only assume that in the YOIverse the Church of England hasn't wasted the last three years on 'shared conversations', and Jeffrey John is probably Archbishop of Canterbury by now.


End file.
